MMA going primetime? This Slice of reality could get ugly

Ready or not, here it comes, with Kimbo leading way

In the late 1990s, the boxing community unveiled a cartoonish giant named Eric Esch - "Butterbean." A big galoot with no formal training, he got his break via the old bar-brawl contest known as the Toughman series. He was The Next Big Thing.

Except he wasn't, and the farce played a large role in boxing's decline.

Saturday night on CBS, mixed martial arts will unveil a cartoonish giant named Kimbo Slice (actual name Kevin Ferguson, which we'll probably never hear again). Like Butterbean, he is a big galoot with no formal training; his fame derives from street brawls that captured a cult following on YouTube. He is The Next Big Thing.

Instead of being a sign of the downfall, though, Kimbo Slice is the headliner of MMA's long-awaited, much-debated entry into mainstream America.

Times, and sports, have changed.

"This is the opportunity for people to understand that mixed martial arts is really a sport," said Gary Shaw, the promoter for Saturday's EliteXC fight card.

But that isn't a question anymore, not after MMA's years making millions of dollars on pay-per-view shows. Mixed martial arts is a sport, and it's too big to ignore.

The significance of Saturday is the prime-time network debut, where the 12-fight card - including a women's match - might accidentally sully unsuspecting sensitive eyeballs between 9 and 11 p.m. (Live from Newark, N.J., it will be tape-delayed for the West Coast.)

Will the accidental viewer be interested - or horrified?

In one sense, no matter how big MMA gets, it will never outgrow John McCain's long-ago label of "human cockfighting.

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" Last month, CBS's executive chairman, Sumner Redstone, said showing it was not "socially responsible."

To broaden the appeal, the network has tapped Gus Johnson for play-by-play. In addition to being a familiar voice from the NFL and NCAA tournament, Johnson practices boxing and kung fu and has just picked up jiu-jitsu. Johnson is wildly popular with younger fans, and that too is part of the strategy.

For the rest, MMA is like a 50 Cent song or a Judd Apatow movie; if you're offended, it just isn't for you. But no bother, there are plenty of others.

The analyst for Saturday's card is San Jose superstar Frank Shamrock. At his teaching academy, he has noticed a shift in kids and their parents.

"Seven years ago, they wanted no contact. . . . Now if your kids are not doing full-contact MMA, the parents are not happy," Shamrock said.

Shamrock says kids are "used to a high level of violence, and so are the parents." The implications are debatable; the point is inarguable.

Fans should be nervous about the exposure, though. The best fighters are on the Ultimate Fighting Championship circuit, and EliteXC is far off. Slice has had two professional fights totaling 62 seconds, and serious questions persist about whether he can grapple on the ground at even the most basic level. Saturday he'll fight James Thompson, who has lost his previous two fights and accepts the title of "sacrificial lamb."

Dana White, the head of UFC, recently said 155-pounder B.J. Penn would destroy the 250-pound Slice. Kimbo didn't respond to White's criticisms. Shaw did with mostly unprintable terms about White; the best and cleanest one was "idiot."

"If he wasn't an idiot, May 31 would have been the UFC instead of EliteXC," Shaw said, perhaps unwittingly confirming his circuit's inferior status.

This would be a bit like professional football growing underground and then putting its best foot forward . . . with the XFL. And it's no coincidence that last week, two announcers spoke glowingly of the promotional abilities of wrestling promoter Vince McMahon, the brains - such as they were - behind the short-lived football league.

EliteXC has orchestrated its plan around Slice, who grew up poor in Miami and eventually landed as a bouncer at a strip club. He graduated to bodyguard for a pornographer and started street brawling. Nobody knows much about his past, but CBS is invested enough in his future that it made him a presenter on the Country Music Awards.

It would be an interesting rise to superstardom indeed. L.Z. Granderson, an ESPN.com columnist who is black, lambasted the stereotypical depictions of Slice. The athlete himself is not entirely quotable, unless his inventive use of the word "commitmentship" counts.

And one of his main sponsors, Reality Kings, will not have its logo in view Saturday night - you know, because of that silly rule against promoting porn sites on network television.